Provenance by Ann Leckie. Set in the same universe as her Ancillary trilogy, but relatively smaller in scope. I appreciate that she pulls off not just telling the same story.

Music

FooL on CooL generation by the pillows. Technically a soundtrack to the FLCL sequels, but functionally a “here’s some great music by the pillows from the last 18 years”. And actually available on US streaming services! The original FLCL soundtrack was my first import from Japan.

I’ll Be Your Girl by The Decemberists. Still enjoying this album. Saw them live, and they still put on a great show.

The Other Shore by Murder by Death. My first listen to the band. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Movies

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I love comics. To paraphrase someone else, this is a comic book movie. Beautiful, fun, humorous. Watch it on the big screen if you can.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower. Well done, beautiful and fantastic aesthetic. Not quite that Ghibli level of perfection, but very much that type of story.

Thor: Ragnarok. Took me a while to see it, but wow. It’s far from perfect, but it is fun. The scenes are all visually stunning, the music perfectly paired, and just enjoyable throughout.

TV

Adventure Time finished this year. The last episode was great. A nice wrap up to a show that started out much simpler than it ended.

Anime

Games

Celeste. I’m not a fan of the brutal platform genre that became big with Super Meat Boy, but Celeste does an excellent job of easing you into it, and you can complete the main story without dealing with anything too insane. The story is great. All the feels.

Destiny 2 continues to occupy a lot of my time. The Forsaken expansion was very well done, and has kept me coming back.

]]>Books

The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisim: finished the trilogy. What a great world, and the ending is just fantastic. A rare book written in the 2nd person.👌🏼

Movies

The Incredibles: rewatched recently. What a great film. Very excited for the sequel.

Upcoming

I’ll Be Your Girl (iTunes): The Decemberists’ latest album is fantastic. They’ve clearly made a shift with their previous album, and this one continues that with a bit more synth. It’s been on heavy rotation since it came out two days ago.

Video Games

I’ll Be Your Girl (iTunes): The Decemberists’ latest album is fantastic. They’ve clearly made a shift with their previous album, and this one continues that with a bit more synth. It’s been on heavy rotation since it came out two days ago.

Video Games

Horizon: Zero Dawn: a very interesting combination of gameplay. You are generally underpowered, making you think more, but it isn’t an extreme stealth game. Very enjoyable.

]]>A quick review of media since the last installment. It was a quieter second half of the year for media consumption.

Books

Oathbringer: Brandon Sanderson’s latest. Third in his Stormlight Archive series. As always a very enjoyable read. I felt that he did a good job really expanding the

]]>https://scottr.org/2018/02/14/media-review-end-of-2017/5a84e8ecc35f951a44556d2fThu, 15 Feb 2018 06:04:16 GMTA quick review of media since the last installment. It was a quieter second half of the year for media consumption.

Books

Oathbringer: Brandon Sanderson’s latest. Third in his Stormlight Archive series. As always a very enjoyable read. I felt that he did a good job really expanding the world and characters on this one. A couple of very powerful moments. It is a time investment, and probably not a good idea to jump in mid-series.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A classic by Ursula K. Le Guin. This was a reread, which I read out loud. Seriously, you should read this. Works very well orally.

Video Games

Destiny 2: The beta did not lead me astray. Bungie knows how to make a good sci-fi shooter. The reviews have been mixed, but I’m in the camp of really enjoying the game. The reduction of the grind mechanics might reduce the ability to spend your entire life on the game, but it does mean there’s only so much time you need to spend. Given my time constraints for playing, this has made it very satisfying. The recent changes feel like they’re very well balanced in responding to the community, but not excluding anyone. I also have a clan to play with now, and the raid is a lot of fun.

Super Mario Odyssey: A great game. Just fun. Created a nice balance of new and old mechanics. Beautiful level design. If you have a Switch, you should be playing this.

Celeste: I played through on the switch. Challenging, but not impossible. The story made the game feel meditative.

Breath of the Wild DLC: DLC 1 was fun, but challenge levels aren’t really my thing. The second DLC was great though. Hit the same notes as the main gameplay, and was a lot of fun.

Movies

Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Put me in the camp of having heavily enjoyed it. I loved the subtle and not so subtle twists on expectation throughout the movie. More thought provoking than The Force Awakens. I’d say The Force Awakens was emotionally more satisfying, but this might be the better movie.

Mary and the Witch’s Flower: Not surprising anyone, this is a visually beautiful film. Very enjoyable, and well done. Ghibli-esque in style, story choice, and presentation, it still had some unique flavors.

Cars 3: Wow, what a good job they did. As good as the first, but with an even better lesson to the story? My favorite moment was with the old racers explaining why they raced: “Moonshine”.

Boss Baby: Better than it had any right to be. The previews do not prepare you for the way the story is told.

TV

The Good Place: Just finished season one. Very well done. They clearly had a lot of fun with this.

]]>Convenience is where the HomePod shines for music. I don’t want to fuss with menus, or having to look at my phone (especially trying to keep a one year old from seeing too many screens). Siri is good enough at music.

For the price (and size) the HomePod sounds

]]>https://scottr.org/2018/02/12/homepod/5a7fa84cc35f951a44556d25Tue, 13 Feb 2018 02:32:59 GMTConvenience is where the HomePod shines for music. I don’t want to fuss with menus, or having to look at my phone (especially trying to keep a one year old from seeing too many screens). Siri is good enough at music.

For the price (and size) the HomePod sounds excellent. I’ve listened to much more expensive setups, and Apple did a stellar job. I’ve heard a few people say it is too quiet, but I haven’t even bothered to push it past 50% volume. My only critique is that the mids sometimes sound a bit weak. Oddly, it does seem to matter what type of music is being played. Might be a software EQ thing.

Can the HomePod do all the other cool things that the competition does? Not really, but I don’t care. It plays music, sounds very nice, and doesn’t feel as creepy. We’ve been very happy with it.

Well, except when I tried to get Siri to play music by Airplane Mode. That confused it a lot.

]]>Recently Tim Carmody had a run as a guest editor on kottke.org. I get a sense Tim and I are at least similar in age, and I found myself with multiple posts just nodding my head in agreement. It is worth linking to a few of these:

]]>https://scottr.org/2017/11/07/tim-carmody-on-kottke/5a72ac411663c73d3cb2d559Tue, 07 Nov 2017 21:14:22 GMTRecently Tim Carmody had a run as a guest editor on kottke.org. I get a sense Tim and I are at least similar in age, and I found myself with multiple posts just nodding my head in agreement. It is worth linking to a few of these:

Howl's Moving Castle isn't the best Miyazaki film. It continues to be my favorite. It isn't the first of his work I saw or read (Princess Mononoke in theaters 1997 and the Nausicaä manga years before that). There is just something about the movie that makes me love it a little more than the rest. Tim's comments really echo many of my thoughts.

A few years ago I found out about Planetary and quickly consumed it all. What a great world. What a great concept. The series isn't for everyone, a few issues have fairly gory violence, otherwise it holds around PG-13. If you're willing, read it. If not, at least read the article to get a sense of what was done in the series.

Warren Ellis is rebooting the world this was in (no sign of Planetary though) in the new DC series The Wild Storm. The new series is pulling from other properties Ellis did.

I saw a comment on Facebook in response to all of this. The comment was arguing
against diversity hiring, claiming that diversity hires don't have the same bar
applied to them. In other words, diversity hiring programs result in hiring
lower quality engineers than the ones hired outside of the programs.

A well run[1] diversity program doesn't lower the bar for hiring. Instead
it provides a way to ensure candidates all have an equal opportunity for
consideration. It works to remove biases in hiring that adversely affect
various groups.

A well known example of this is with the hiring of orchestra members. I think most would expect that those auditioning are hiring strictly based on their skills, meaning that a woman who is more skilled than a man would be hired. This wasn't the case, and as orchestras implemented blind auditions suddenly women started to be hired. Studies have been done on this, and it is clear that blind auditions removed bias from the hiring process[2].

There are a number of choke points where conscious or
unconscious bias can come into play in hiring at most tech companies:

Recruiter resume filtering

Hiring manager resume filtering

Phone screens

On-site interviews

Offer parameters (base pay, stock, etc)

The best solutions I've seen put efforts into all stages[3]. The work at each stage is a bit different[4], but progress can be made and measured. I don't have a magical solution, and I don't think the big names in tech do either[5].

Getting more diversity into tech is important. A varied set of backgrounds and
life experiences help us make better products for our customers, and serve
broader markets. The most important reason is that people should have
the opportunity to work in the field they want, and actually be judged on their merits[6].

Can a company implement a diversity hiring system that does apply a different bar for hires? Sure. Have I ever seen or heard of one? Nope. And let's be honest tech hiring is hard, imprecise, and makes mistakes. And evaluating the quality of someone's work, once hired, is subjective. Bias extends well beyond hiring and includes how we evaluate and treat the employees that are present. ↩︎

A diversity program can be implemented only at stage 1, creating a pipeline where all the resumes meet the diversity criteria. This means that stages 2–4 can't make comparisons to candidates where a bias might come into play. This methodology has some problems. It means you are ignoring non-diverse candidates, running two hiring pipelines, or rejecting everyone just further down the pipeline. Is it better or worse than doing nothing? I'd learn towards better, but I'm not totally sure. ↩︎

For example: Getting more resumes from diverse groups in at stage 1. Removing opportunities for bias to have an effect in stage 2. Making phone screens uniform for a job at stage 3. The hardest is stage 4, where it means training employees to understand bias. Stage 5 means uniformity for offers given and pay. ↩︎

Looking at gender for Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. Of those that report the breakdown in engineering/tech roles, it is around 20% women. We can do better. ↩︎

One other pet peeve I've seen this week is people citing statistics of the number of women in CS and engineering programs in the US being at all time highs (or particularly the AP CS test having a majority of women taking it). That's great, but retention of women in these fields is terrible. More women coming in the field is great, but they need to stay. We have a lot of work to do still. ↩︎

]]>A quick review of the various media I've enjoyed the first half of the year. Not an exhaustive list, just hitting the high points and where I've spent the most time.

Video Games

]]>https://scottr.org/2017/07/23/media-diet-first-half-of-2016/5a72ac411663c73d3cb2d544Sun, 23 Jul 2017 18:13:10 GMTA quick review of the various media I've enjoyed the first half of the year. Not an exhaustive list, just hitting the high points and where I've spent the most time.

Video Games

Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: I checked the Switch's play time: 140 hours. I regret nothing. Takes everything great about the Zelda series, and really harkens back to the original (no directions). Adds in modern gameplay devices. I think I have one or two uncompleted side quests, but I've found every shrine, and have almost completed the first DLC. Play with the Japanese audio if you can, or rewatch some of the cut scenes with it. Probably game of the year for me.

Night in the Woods: I backed this on Kickstarter, and it came out this spring. Fits well into what I enjoy out of indie games: story and character driven. It rewards exploration and talking to everyone. Great music too.

Final Fantasy XV: First Final Fantasy game I've played since 9. Excellent mechanics, good balance of difficulty, and the game keeps things moving along. I never felt like I was grinding. The large open world was fun to explore. Finished it in a little over 60 hours. Very weak with the story, a lot isn't fully explained in game. The characters are weak, and the "spontaneous dialog" in the car quickly becomes repetitive. Music wasn't used as well as previous entries in the series. The fact the car stereo is populated with the previous games' soundtracks was wonderful. And now I want to go back and play Final Fantasy VI.

The Caledonian Gambit: Science Fiction spy thriller. That is a weak summary. Good start to Dan Moren's fiction career. It was a good, quick read. Can't wait for the next one.

Movies

Your Name.: Beautiful and fantastic. It starts out very much as one movie (and does that well), but becomes something totally unexpected. Also, great soundtrack. I pre-ordered the release of the Japanese Blu-ray (since it still doesn't have a US release date, and I just need English subtitles).

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2: Fun movie. Played many of the same riffs as the first, to great effect. A couple of absolutely beautiful scenes with great use of color.

TV

Steven Universe: Not watching much of TV, but Steven Universe continues to keep me wanting more. Cartoon Network's weird scheduling continues to frustrate. The soundtrack came out recently, and it a lot of fun to listen too. That got me into a slow re-watch I've been doing, which has been very enjoyable.